"No! no! She was called Madame Fulton at his apartment. I distinctly remember that."
They had been immovably facing each other, but now Electra turned away and walked back to the library table, where she stood resting one hand and waiting, pale and tired, yet unchanged. This seemed to her one of the times that try men's souls, but wherein a New England conscience must abide by its traditions.
"How long does she propose remaining?" she asked, out of her desire to put some limit to the distasteful situation, though she had forbidden herself to enter it with even that human interest.
"Why, as long as we ask her to stay,—you, or, if she is not to expect anything from you, I. She has nothing of her own, poor girl."
"Has her father repudiated her? That ought to tell something."
Peter was silent for a moment. Then he said in an engaging honesty, bound as it was to hurt his own cause,—
"I don't know. I don't understand their relation altogether. Rose gives no opinions, but I fancy she is not in sympathy with him."
"Yes, I fancied so."
"But we mustn't fancy so. We mustn't get up an atmosphere and look through it till we see distorted facts."
"Those are what I want, Peter, facts. If Miss MacLeod—"